In 2020, I became an advocate without even realising it. I started pouring my emotions, my feelings, my whole heart into writing about topics I once found difficulty in expressing in real life. I started writing about race, chronic illness and sexuality. Due to me being in all of these minorities (and to also be a woman), I am prone to suffer from combined discrimination – when a person is discriminated due to a combination of two or more protected characteristics. I am a disabled, Chinese, demisexual female and I became sick of being discriminated against, feeling alone and saying nothing.
I became tired of bottling things up. The way doctors generalise my condition takes away from the fact every Lupus fighter has different conditions, medications, mindsets. People only seeing colour takes away from my unique individuality, where people who don’t (see colour) ignorantly don’t acknowledge the hardships people in ethnic minorities face. Talking about Demisexuality, I’ve been gaslighted that it’s not a real thing, I’m trying too hard to be different and says everyone feels that way to an extent. Exposing myself to the world proposes different challenges as I am now more prone to negative feedback or people seeing me as the annoying person who only uses their social media presence to talk about serious topics. But there is more to me than being in these minorities. I like to crochet, I like to draw, I like to play table tennis. I like being part of something, to lead a group and have creative control. I like spending time with my family, socialising with friends and developing deep meaningful connections. And with this in the background, I like to advocate with a burning passion.
As well as writing, which is my main outlet for advocating, I have started to express myself more on social media too. I’ve stopped hiding certain aspects of myself with previous fear of not wanting to make things into a big deal, making it seem like my whole personality or to seem annoying by constantly spreading awareness. I started connecting with people in a similar boat, who can have a similar understanding and support. And it feels amazing. My own mental health improved, where two years ago I was in a rut from the increased racism towards my race. I was also discovering my sexuality and had the worst flare-up I had ever had since my Lupus diagnosis in 2014. I started to understand myself better, gaining more confidence in speaking publicly about my thoughts and feelings on matters I used to shy away from.
I write for me. Due to my difficulty in expressing the hardships I deal with on a daily basis, writing is a beautiful outlet for me to illustrate my thoughts and document them for myself to be able to understand these feelings. Writing about topics where I have such a strong connection towards reaps many benefits. Not only does it have a practical use in improving my writing skills, but also my confidence in actually publishing my work for anyone to see. I have no fucking clue who takes the time to read my work, if they even do and what people think of it. But I don’t really care even if nobody does, because advocating for myself brings me joy.
I began to realise I was doing something, part of something so much greater than myself when people started to reach out to me to tell me how interesting they thought my work was, educational, even inspiring. It surprised me when these messages started flooding in, because I didn’t realise, I was making a difference, even by a little. When someone goes out of their way to read my work, which to me is just a diary entry and comments on how eye-opening it is, it really shows how everyone can really have some sort of impact. They then have an impact on me by giving me a warm fuzzy feeling that my work is being appreciated and valued. There was even a girl who has followed me on Instagram for a while who specifically coming up to speak to me at a bar one night and told me how much she loved my work on chronic illness, as my confidence in sharing ‘bad’ parts about myself (like my skin flare-ups) helped her with her struggles of eczema. It made her feel more comfortable and less alone with what she was dealing with. I got extremely touched by these positive views on my creations which motivated me more to keep going at what I already loved doing. And that was when my advocacy was really born.
Since I write for myself, there is less pressure to do something the ‘right’ way. I just do it my way. I write when I want, where I want, using my own experiences and opinions to shed a different narrative on topics that can’t rely on textbook definitions. I like to write opinion pieces because no piece will ever be the same. I crave individuality where I love learning about peoples’ unique experiences and perspectives. That’s what I try to bring into my art. I always thought of advocates as people who have greater power, greater influence on a large platform. But actually, an advocate can be anyone who publicly supports a particular cause, promoting and/or defending those unheard in society. An advocate can be anyone who actively raises awareness for important topics that may be overlooked, where action needs to be taken to make it better for groups involved. An advocate can simply be me.